Many of our speakers have hundreds or thousands of followers on social media. To get the best attendance for the user group the speaker should announce on through as many media channels as possible that they are presenting at the user group.

​Each venue is a little different and has different requirements. Don’t expect presenters to know how each user group runs, especially if the user group organisers will not be available on the day/night.

​​For example:

Sydney .NET User Group Presenter Information

Presenters will require a HDMI output, you will need an adaptor if you do not have this output.

Canberra .NET User​​​​ Group Presen​​ter Information​

Presenters can use full-size HDMI, Mini-display port or USB-C to project. There is a monitor on the lectern which duplicates the projector screen, so it is possible to use “Presenter Mode” if you want to.

Wifi is available on the MSFTGUEST network, but you will need the reception staff or MS sponsor to create an event access code that you can use to authenticate.3. Attendees arrive around 5:30. Meet-and-greet until 5:45, then start the user group.​

Brisbane .NET User Group Presenter Inform​​ation

​​​Presenters will require a HDMI output, you will need an adaptor if you do not have this output.​​

Melbourne .NET User Group Presenter Information

​​​​​Presenters will require a HDMI output, you will need an adaptor if you do not have this output.​​​

You will have to promote your event in a way that makes sense to your topic and approach. The most cost effective way is to use the large variety of online services that are available.

Meetup

This is the best way to increase discoverability of your event. Meetup provides the following:

Allows people to search and discover​ events

Allows people to join your group to get updates

You can easily list your upcoming events and have people join them

Comes with an automatic mailing list so you can send out announcements

Word of Mouth

Don't underestimate the power of one friend or colleague telling another. DDD Melbourne sold out in 10 hours with almost no promotion except for Twitter and Word of Mouth. If you are creating a recurring event, Word of Mouth becomes extremely important as past experiences flow through the grapevine.​

Social Media

In some circumstances it is worth setting up one or more accounts on social media for promoting and corresponding as the event identity. In technical circles it is especially popular to use Twitter as a way to create awareness about events. SSW use a combination of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram to promote our events, that way we have a much larger and diverse audience to draw from.​​

TIP: Get your staff to Tweet at events and to Re-Tweet your events to help reach a larger audience! ​​

A great way to increase your over all audience, as well as your attendance at each User Group, is to use social media and online forums like MeetUp​ to advertise your events. At SSW we use MeetUp, as well as the social media platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to announce all of our upcoming User Groups and keep track of attendance.

​Audience shots are great except when you don’t have a full house.​​ In this case you should move people to be next to each other.

​

​

Figure: Bad example – the audience shot shows the bad numbers. It would be better to not use this view

​

​

Figure: Bad example – the audience shot shows the bad numbers. You want to use this wide shot, but you need to make sure the attendees not in the shot are moved so their head is visible

​

Figure: Good example – a shot from the SSW Chapel​ where the audience has been moved so they are in shot

​​TIP: To ensure you get the best shot possible, fill seating from the front back. It's​ a good idea to use VIP signs and place them on the back row to prevent people sitting there initially. These can be moved later when all seats are filled at the front.

The best time​ to get attendees to fill out the feedback form is before the last session of the event. This is when people are still reasonably engaged and the people wanting to leave early haven't left yet.

​Sometimes it is also worth getting attendees to evaluate individual speakers. This can be done with something as simple as red, yellow and green tokens to indicate how well a speaker did after each talk, or you can set up an elaborate online rating system. It really depends on what you are trying to achieve and what information you need.

​The best way to find out how your clients and customers think about you is to ask them. If you're not up to putting your pride on the line by asking them yourself then the next best way is to use surveys or evaluation forms. It's discrete, impartial and gives the evaluator a chance to add comments that may be difficult to say to you in person.

​​At SSW we bring our eval forms to every event we run or speak at. This allows us to reflect on our performance and run some quantitative analysis on the survey results. Take a look at our Speakers and Presentation Evaluation Form.​

Help and improve these rules

Nothing great is easy. The SSW rules are a great resource for developers all around the world.
However it’s hard to keep rules current and correct. If you spot a rule that is out of date, please email or if you are cool tweet me.